Karuk Tribe-funded study: Ruffey Rancheria never existed

A U.S. Bureau of Indian Affair type map of Ruffey’s Rancheria in 1958 located outside of the Siskiyou County town of Etna. A Lewis & Clark College professor emeritus concluded in a study of the rancheria that there was never an operating tribal nation using the land, seemingly undermining arguments to reestablish the rancheria through a proposed bill in Congress, HR 3535.
U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs — Contributed by Stephen Beckham

A northern California congressman says his bill to restore the Ruffey Rancheria tribal nation would right a historic wrong, but a recent study of federal archives concluded there is nothing to restore because the tribe never existed.

Based on his findings, Lewis & Clark College history professor emeritus Stephen Beckham, whose has studied northern California Native American history for about 50 years, concluded in his study that Congressman Doug LaMalfa’s bill, known as the Ruffey Rancheria Restoration Act, is “intellectually dishonest.”

Beckham questioned why the bill would seek to provide individuals claiming to be descendents of the Ruffey Rancheria tribal nation with the ability to exercise water and other resource rights, the ability to construct a casino and rights to federal resources when there is no evidence the Rancheria ever existed as a functioning tribal nation.

“What LaMalfa’s bill is asking the federal government to do is restore a federal relationship with a piece of real estate, not with a tribe,” Beckham said to the Times-Standard on Saturday. “There is no tribe. He hasn’t documented a tribe.”

Beckham said documents dating from 1907 to 1960 that he reviewed at the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ national archives in San Bruno showed there was no record of the Ruffey Rancheria being anything more than an unoccupied piece of brushy, forested hillside south of the Siskiyou County town of Etna.

Both LaMalfa (R-Richvale) and Tahj Gomes, a Chico-based attorney who represents himself as the Ruffey Rancheria chairman, are firing back against the report, calling it inaccurate, claiming it left out key documents proving the tribal nation’s existence and calling Beckham biased. Both Gomes and LaMalfa said they have provided information to address the concerns of members of Congress and of more than 70 federally recognized tribes that have been raised about the bill.

Beckham and other concerned parties said they have yet to see any such documentation provided by either Gomes or LaMalfa.

LaMalfa’s communications director Parker Williams said in a statement to the Times-Standard earlier this month that the study’s conclusion that the Ruffey Rancheria is unknown is “inaccurate and disingenuous,” but did not specify what the inaccuracies were.

“Because Congress terminated the tribe, only Congress can reinstate it,” Williams wrote. “This is simply what his bill aims to do — and is consistent with the other California Rancheria restoration language.”

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Gomes called Beckham a “hired gun who is willing to draw whatever conclusion best suits his current employer.”

“The Beckham Report is factually wrong,” Gomes told the Times-Standard on Friday. “There is a list of members, the Tribe’s members were resident on or near the original reservation lands or on other lands purchased or leased for the Ruffey Rancheria’s members, and the correspondence between the Ruffey Rancheria and the Bureau of Indian Affairs is evidence of the government-to-government relationship.

“Beckham simply did not include the evidence that undermined the favored conclusion by his employer, the Karuk Tribe,” Gomes continued.

Beckham’s report concludes otherwise, finding that there was no documentation or evidence of there ever being a government-to-government relationship between the United States and any person or entity identifying as the Ruffey Rancheria and no tribal activity associated with the Rancheria from 1907 to 1960.

Beckham found that “Old Man” Ruffey, the tribal elder whom the Rancheria land was originally purchased for and named after in the early 20th century, never lived on the property, opting instead to live in a house outside the Rancheria boundaries.

Beckham was hired by the Karuk Tribe to produce the study. The tribe has questioned historical evidence of the Ruffey Rancheria’s existence and the water, land and other rights it seeks to claim. The tribe has also accused LaMalfa of introducing the bill to disrupt an ongoing plan to remove four Klamath River hydroelectric dams, which LaMalfa has publicly opposed.

The Karuk Tribe and about 70 other tribes have called for further hearings on the bill to address their concerns, but now Karuk Tribe officials say they have changed to their stance to staunch opposition to the bill.

“LaMalfa and Gomes are inventing a Tribe from scratch and offering virtually no information on who these people are or what their ancestral ties are to this place,” Karuk Tribal Council Chairman Russell Attebery said in a statement earlier this month. “This effort diminishes what it means to be a Tribe and dishonors the concept of Tribal sovereignty for all Indians.”

LaMalfa’s bill narrowly passed through the House Natural Resources Committee earlier this year in a 19-18 vote.

“I’ve said all along that Congress should slow down so that California tribes have time to get meaningful answers to their questions about this bill,” committee member and California 2nd District Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) said in a statement to the Times-Standard on Friday. “I already asked for a second committee hearing to cover the serious questions that have been raised, and [Beckham’s] report seems to raise even more.”

The bill is next set to be heard by the House Rules Committee.

An agent and ‘Old Man’ Ruffey

Beckham said Bureau of Indian Affairs agent Charles Kelsey worked for the bureau for about 20 years, particularly focusing on non-reservation Native Americans of northern California in the early 20th century — a time when only two tribal reservations existed in the region. Traveling in 1905-1906, Kelsey estimated there were about 11,800 landless, homeless Native Americans in northern California who had been driven out by white settlers and Gold Rush miners, according to Beckham’s report.

“Kelsey did a year of field travel in 1905 and 1906 to do a general population census of Indians and Congress appropriated money to purchase Rancherias,” Beckham said.

One of the Rancherias that was bought was the 441-acre Ruffey Rancheria in 1907 for two bands of “Indians of Etna,” according to letters penned by Kelsey. One of these “Indians of Etna” was “Old Man” Ruffey, a man in his 70s who had disputes with neighbors who had bullied his family, according to Kelsey’s letters. A land title dispute ended with a neighbor tying a chain around Ruffey’s home and hauling it from the ground, prompting Ruffey to attempt to shoot one of his neighbors; Ruffey was prevented from doing so, according to Kelsey’s account.

The Rancheria was meant to establish a new home for Ruffey and his relatives, but Beckham found no evidence of any Native American using the land.

A 1913 letter from Kelsey to the commissioner of Indian Affairs has proven a central and contentious document in determining which Native Americans the Ruffey Rancheria property was purchased for. The letter identified 57 individuals in the Etna area, which Gomes said establishes who the original members of the Rancheria were and whom their descendants are.

Gomes previously estimated there are about 350 people eligible for enrollment for the Ruffey Rancheria under LaMalfa’s bill.

Finding evidence

Congress eventually voted to terminate several rancherias in California, including the Ruffey Rancheria, in the late 1950s, with the former rancheria eventually being sold by Ruffey’s descendents to the International Paper Company in 1960, Beckham said.

Gomes said that if Beckham’s report had been correct that Ruffey Rancheria would be ineligible for restoration because the Rancheria was a piece of real estate and not actually a tribe, “then it follows logically that every other tribe terminated under the California Rancheria Termination Act should not be, or have been, restored either.”

“The Beckham Report threatens the sovereignty of every tribe in California that was once terminated and had to fight for its restoration in court or to petition Congress,” Gomes said.

Beckham said that the Ruffey Rancheria is not like every other tribe or Rancheria that was terminated, namely because it lacks documentation and evidence that it ever functioned as a sovereign tribal nation.

While Kelsey’s letters recorded a list of people for whom Ruffey Rancheria was purchased for, Beckham said there is no further evidence of anyone ever using the land, no documentation or evidence that there was ever a tribal government established or operated both before and after the rancheria was terminated.

Beckham said he has worked with studied several other Rancherias that had also been set up by Kelsey.

“And they have a very different history,” Bechkam said. “They had housing programs, well improvements, roads, agricultural programs, fences, annual inspections, numerous census compilations by the bureaus officials of the people living there. That does not exist for Ruffey’s Rancheria.”

Gomes said there is no controversy in Beckham’s findings that the Ruffey Rancheria land was not particularly suited for human habitation, ranching or farming. But Gomes said the report failed to locate or discuss “extensive archival correspondence” between tribal members and the Bureau of Indian Affairs detailing site visits by federal officials to the Rancheria, attempts “to relocate the Rancheria, subsequent land purchases and leases that provided land for its members, and efforts by the tribe to prevent trespass on the 1907 land up through the time of Termination.”

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has also identified the Ruffey Rancheria as a tribe that had been terminated in a 1972 guidance document titled “American Indians and Their Federal Relationship.”

Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Policy Advisor Craig Tucker said that if Gomes has a “treasure trove of archival materials,” he has yet to share them.

“We have been requesting that Ruffey and LaMalfa share such material so we can validate Gomes’ claims,” Tucker said.

Tucker said Beckham’s report does confirm the report of trespassing on the Rancheria, but said this is “hardly evidence” of there having been a tribal government in place.

Gomes told the Times-Standard that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has reviewed LaMalfa’s bill to ensure that the Rancheria was a historic tribe, and that the bill did not advance in Congress until the bureau “offered its concurrence.”

Tucker argues that the administration’s position on the bill in September 2017 — about two months after the bill was introduced into Congress — was “unknown at this time,” according to a congressional committee memorandum about the bill.

Beckham said there was also no evidence that the Ruffey Rancheria operated as a tribal nation after it was terminated, but Gomes disagrees.

“Like most terminated Tribes in the California, the Ruffey Rancheria stayed together by establishing its own association,” Gomes wrote. “As a congressionally-terminated Tribe, the correspondence and evidence of this interaction will not be found in the Bureau of Indian Affairs records, but at the individual agency level. Beckham was looking in the wrong place if he wanted to find these documents.

“Beckham also did not contact the Tribe to review its own archive of correspondence and evidence of its interaction with Federal and California State agencies,” Gomes continued.

Karuk Tribe officials and Beckham are calling on Gomes to release this information and documentation if it is available. Beckham also confirmed that he did not ask Gomes for documentation because he was hired to review federal records.

“I went to all the traditional sources that a historian would use and employed that in my report,” Beckham said. “... [Gomes] claims that he has all these documents. This is the moment for him to produce them. He needs to produce clippings, election records, council members, pow wows, tribal gatherings, resolutions where the tribe has exercised its political authority over its members, he needs to show where his tribal members have been attending [Bureau of Indian Affairs] schools, bureau hospitals, where they have been federally recognized in a formal relationship with the United States.”

Credibility and connection

Gomes said that Beckham’s report conflicts with statements he made about the Ruffey Rancheria as part of a federally funded project in 1982, in which he said Beckham stated the rancheria was “an important element in Shasta history and presence in Siskiyou County.”

Gomes said these statements contradict Beckham’s current position, which he claims was “bought and paid for by the Karuk Tribe.”

Asked to respond, Beckham said he was paid to do research and write a report, but said his conclusions are entirely his own as are the questions he posed at the end of his report about LaMalfa’s bill and testimony made by Gomes. Beckham said he is unsure what 1982 report Gomes is referring to, but said that he has never done an in-depth analysis of the Ruffey Rancheria’s history prior to this report.

“I have no personal stake in this, but I am mindful of equity among federally recognized tribes,” Beckham said.

Gomes’ own ties to the Ruffey Rancheria are questioned in Beckham’s report.

Beckham’s report concluded that the majority of the people on Kelsey’s letter were Karuk tribal members, including Gomes’ great grandfather Aaron Burcell Jr. The report found that Gomes’ mother and grandmother were or are enrolled in the Karuk Tribe as well. Gomes said he is not an enrolled member of the Karuk Tribe or any federally recognized tribe.

Beckham questions why Gomes has identified himself as a member of the Shasta Nation Etna Band to the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors.

Gomes said he has at times indicated that he represented the “Etna Band of Indians,” because the Ruffey Rancheria was established for them “and both group names have historically been used by the Department of Interior.” Gomes said the Board of Supervisors’ minutes identifying himself as representing the Shasta Nation Etna Band were in error.

For the Karuk Tribe, Tucker said they are concerned about LaMalfa’s bill “rewriting” the Ruffey Rancheria’s original enrollment criteria to be broader than it originally was.

“It is a question we have as to who are the members of Tahj’s group and how many people would be eligible to enroll in Ruffey under the terms of HR 3535,” Tucker said. “We simply don’t know because they refuse to share that information.”